Jeff Buckley’s Grace

Grace

July, 25 2015 | Terminal West

Welcome to Grace, the only studio album ever recorded by Jeff Buckley. Recorded at Bearsville in Woodstock, New York, and released on Columbia Records August 23rd, 1994, Grace has attained legendary status since Buckley drowned in 1997. It was a bold debut from the son of folk singer Tim Buckley, full of involved arrangements and soaring vocals, with torch songs and quiet ballads and some blues. Buckley is at once intimate and theatrical in his vocal stylings, and his sound bucked the grunge trend of the mid-90s. The album is most known and revered for his cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” It’s perhaps the cover of all covers, something we at the Collective can appreciate. As Dan Raby of NPR’s “All Things Considered” explains, “Cohen made a personal song, his own private struggle with faith and love. Buckley’s takes the concept and turns it universal. He draws out every little dramatic up and down to theatrical heights. He made the blueprint that every person with a guitar, a dream and a full string section could follow to leave people watching in tears.